Though cool headed back to NYC for the seventies, it sat heavy in L.A. during the sixties. Ruscha, Bell, Irwin, and big-daddy Duchamp's west-coast exploits are all covered in Hunter Drohojowska-Philp's (Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe) Rebels In Paradise and links the work that appeared at both galleries Dwan and Ferus (where Warhol's soup cans were first shown)to the Watts Riots and Easy Rider. No stuffy look back, here's an excerpt from the book, a quote from artist Ed Kienholz:
"We didn't talk the art out... If we sat around in the [Barney's] Beanery, we talked about who was a good fuck and where we were going to get six dollars so we could buy gas for a car to go to the Valley and get drunk... I don't know that I've ever talked to Bob Irwin about art in my life."